Pacific Glory

by P. T. Deutermann

  “You sent the signal,” he said. “Consider yourself rescued. Hey—the music’s on. Let’s dance.”

  The hotel had piped music from one of the bands inside to the tree-mounted speakers on the lanai dance floor, which was basically a low wooden platform on the sand in the middle of a small grove of palms. Lawn torches scented with citronella gave off a yellowish light.

  She felt unusually self-aware, dancing bare-legged with this handsome man wearing nothing but his swim trunks. Some of the other women had wrapped colorful beach skirts around their waists, and Glory wished she’d done the same. It was doubly awkward because they’d taken their drinks with them onto the floor. Her swimsuit fit like a second skin, and its bullet-bra top made her breasts stick out like impudent dunce caps. The bottom of the suit barely covered the tops of her thighs. She saw Sally dancing with one of the officers from the fleet headquarters. Sally was wearing a suit similar to Glory’s, except hers appeared to be made out of even thinner material. The poor man with her was having a tough time concentrating on not stepping on her feet or his own arousal. Sally winked at her over the man’s shoulder.

  Stembridge seemed to be making sure he didn’t bump into her body, and she was being just as careful not to make physical contact. There was no avoiding his intensely masculine presence, though a mixed aura of perspiration, suntan lotion, and a hint of something far more elemental. He was a well-made man with no body fat, long, strong arms, and hands hardened by years of surgery. She sipped her drink, still pretty sure that there wasn’t much booze in it, couldn’t be, not with all that ice and fruit juice.

  Another couple bumped into them from behind her, and she felt the unmistakable brush of exploring fingers across her bottom. She flinched away and right into a full-length contact with Stembridge. For just an instant, she stopped moving and so did he. They were touching from top to bottom, and she felt a sudden flash of desire that she hadn’t experienced literally for years as his hard body made firm contact with the front of her swimsuit.

  Then the music stopped, and they hastily broke apart. Stembridge, pretending that nothing had happened, was looking over her shoulder and heartily greeting someone new and then introducing Glory, who was still trying to recover her voice and her composure. They joined the line that was forming for the barbecue, everyone talking, no one listening. By this time, Stembridge was behind her in line, and she was once again intensely aware of him, as if their bodies had unfinished business to conduct. She downed the rest of her drink in one long gulp and put the wide-mouthed glass down on a table near the barbecue. She was glad that it was getting dark, because she was sure there was a red flush rising on her neck. Or maybe it was just the Downfall. Now that she’d finished it, she realized that, yes, there had been a wee bit of alcohol in that thing. She wasn’t drunk, but she’d never been a serious drinker, and it didn’t take too much to make her head spin.

  “Let’s sit over there,” Stembridge said when they had their plates. He was pointing to a tiny table just off the dance floor. Once they were seated he asked if she needed another drink. She’d wobbled just a bit sitting down.

  “One of those was quite enough,” she said, “but please don’t hold back on my account.”

  “Me?” he said. “I don’t drink. This is just ice and pineapple juice, so I don’t have to listen to ‘real men’ razzing me for being a teetotaler.”

  “That makes you something of a rare bird in the Navy,” she said.

  “Got to like the booze much too much, early on,” he said. “Quit while I still could. Self-control is important to me.”

  “I usually need a drink at the end of the day,” she said. “One cocktail, one cigarette. My two vices.”

  “Only two?” he said with an easy smile. “Sounds like a dull life.”

  “Mmmm” was all she said, looking past him at the afterglow of the sunset over Diamond Head.

  * * *

  Back at the nurses’ quarters, Glory went straight to the bathroom, still wearing her suit. She’d seen two of the other nurses taking their leave of the party right after dinner and had joined them on the empty bus. Stembridge had been gracious about her leaving early, saying he’d be on the next bus back himself. They had an official pass to be out after curfew, but they were still restricted to the military bus system.

  She stepped into the communal bathroom and turned on the lights. There was no trace of her flushed skin from earlier, although her eyes were a bit bloodshot from a combination of the sun and that sneaky drink. Her hair had that lank, lifeless look that came from too much salt air. Just for the hell of it, she turned on the shower and stepped in, still wearing her suit. She rinsed her hair and then got back out to examine herself in the mirror. She’d been right about the bathing suit: Soaking wet, it had become just barely transparent, displaying some rather private areas of contrasting color. She’d have to remember that, the next time she went beaching.

  Once in bed, she let her mind wander back to that moment on the dance floor. It was one thing to be conscious of a man’s desire from a safe distance. It was quite another to feel it so directly. She’d been startled by the strength of her own response. Had she been hiding herself under false pretenses these past two years since Tommy had died? At least Stembridge had had the good grace not to tell her, as every other man eventually told her, that she had to rejoin the human race, start living again, et cetera. In fact, he’d never put a foot wrong in that department, and yet what she’d felt on the dance floor had been unmistakable. Did that mean simply that he was a normal, healthy male of the species, or was something more subtle going on between them? Was it possible he was working some kind of reverse psychology on her? Pretending he didn’t desire her to the point where she’d notice, and then maybe go on the sexual offensive herself?

  Listen to me, she thought. Being Lady Everest for the past two years had simplified her life immensely. Why change now?

  Still.

  TEN

  Pearl, December 1943

  On Christmas Day, the captain, two engineers from the shipyard, and Marsh stood on top of the starboard engine reduction gear casing while the chief engineer unlocked the access plates. The Evans had been sent back from the Tarawa operation after a loud, rattling noise in the starboard engine forced an emergency shutdown. The reduction gears, weighing several tons, translated the 24,000 RPM of the steam turbines to the low-hundreds RPM of the ship’s propellers. Reduction gear repairs required the services of a shipyard, so once again Evans was back in Pearl.

  The crew, of course, was heartbroken to be in Hawaii for the holidays instead of out on the gun line, to the point where the captain had wondered out loud to Marsh if whatever was loose in the reduction gearing was indeed an accident. He’d checked with Chief Gorman to see if there was anything to that, and the chief had laughed it off. Marsh tended to agree with him—their guys were a pretty gung-ho bunch when it came to shooting things up. While no one was going to pass up two weeks’ worth of liberty down on Hotel Street, Marsh thought that the notion of self-inflicted sabotage was pretty far-fetched.

  Since they were going to be in the yards for two weeks, it was decided that Evans would be regunned, having put the allotted number of rounds through her five-inchers during all the shore-bombardment operations. This involved taking off the five gun barrels and replacing them with new ones, followed by a tedious process called a battery alignment. That project, plus the inevitable laundry list of broken pumps, valve repairs, hull preservation, and the accumulated mountain of low-priority of paperwork, meant full workdays for the entire two-week stay.

  The good news, of course, was that, as XO, Marsh could take every night off, and that meant he was going to see a lot of Sally. Their letters throughout the grind of 1943 had drawn them much closer, and he was really looking forward to being with her. They’d only been gone since early October, but it had seemed longer. Marsh knew that there was one personal minefield he had to avoid: Glory. He could still remember the subtle change in
Sally’s expression when he’d mentioned Glory’s name after the incident with the hospital ship. He’d told her then to forget Glory, and had promised himself that he would park all his adolescent pipe dreams in the memory locker for good. As he stood watching the engineers dive into the inner workings of all that oily bronzed gearing, though, he had to wonder: Forget Glory? Now that he was here in Pearl, that would be a lot easier said than done, until he remembered that Sally would probably have a role to play in that little project.

  “What are you smiling about, XO?” the captain asked.

  Marsh just shook his head and said, “Nothing, Captain.”

  The captain looked at him and then shook his head. “It’s that nurse, isn’t it,” he said. “God help us. I do believe my XO’s in love.”

  * * *

  Sally came back into the room from the bathroom with her makeup kit, took one look at Glory, and said, “That’s not fair.”

  Glory smiled, kissed a tissue, and examined the lipstick mark. She’d taken some time with the war paint tonight. She normally used very little makeup. It was expensive, and hard to get, and not a little unfair to parade down a ward of badly injured men tarted up like a chorus-line girl. Tonight, though, she had gone all out, with a dark blue, low-cut ball gown, heels, and her hair done up by a downtown hairdresser. She was wearing her one good pair of nylons and three strategically placed dabs of Lanvin’s Arpège.

  “Okay,” Sally said. “Who’s the intended victim?”

  “Superman,” Glory said. “I think he’s been playing a game with me.”

  “Everyone else thinks you’re an item,” Sally said. “Not true?”

  “Not even close,” Glory said.

  “But you’re always together. Surgery, meetings, all those committees.”

  Glory turned to look at Sally. “We’re getting ready to commission twenty-two field hospitals,” she said. “Even I don’t know where they’re going, but we’re looking at three thousand medical personnel. That’s business, Sally. War business. You ever find me not here at night?”

  “Well, no,” Sally said, “but you know how the girls gossip.”

  “Don’t be one of them.”

  “Okay, okay. Sorry. So what’s the game?”

  “Ah, well, that’s the point. Superman has never put a foot or a hand wrong. Never made a pass. Never copped a feel. Holds my hand on the dance floor while talking over my shoulder to someone else.”

  “I get it,” Sally said. “Deliberately ignoring the best-looking woman in the hospital. Finally got you wondering—lost my touch?”

  Glory smiled again. “Possibly. So, tonight? I’m going to make an entrance. I’m going to walk right by him, flash him the fifty-thousand-watt smile, and then I’m going to ask the first officer I meet if he’d like to dance. Then the next one after that. Make a little stir. My contribution to their New Year’s celebration. Flirt shamelessly with everyone. Except Superman.”

  Sally raised her eyebrows. “And what happens when one of your unsuspecting victims gets the wrong idea? Lady Everest is finally thawing out? How do you turn off that fire once you start it?”

  “Easy,” Glory said. “Marsh Vincent will be there tonight. He called earlier, did I tell you? If I have to, I’ll run to him for safety.”

  “Commander Vincent isn’t exactly indifferent to you, Glory. You run to him, looking like that, you may get a surprise.”

  “Then maybe Superman will come to the rescue. We’ll find out how dedicated he is to his little game.”

  Sally frowned. “Glory—this isn’t you.”

  Glory slipped into her gloves. “It is now,” she said. “Besides, Sally, what do you know of me, really?”

  “I know I’ve lived in your shadow for almost two years. You’ve been devoted to the memory of your husband. You’ve put up with an army of horny guys who want to take your pants off, and you’ve done it with dignity. Suddenly you’re going to play party vamp?”

  Glory felt her face getting red. She thought of a hundred slashing comments she could make. Instead, she simply turned back to the mirror. “See you at the party, Sal,” she said.

  When she turned back around, Sally had gone.

  “Dammit,” she muttered as she got her purse.

  Sally was right, of course, and Glory could not explain exactly what was going on, other than as a culmination of things: Stembridge’s long campaign of physical proximity coupled with studied indifference, the waves of wanting coming from every other healthy male she encountered in a world where the men outnumbered the women twenty to one, the abnormal juxtaposition of being beautiful while pretending to remain aloof from the earthy tensions of human desire. Superman had let his own guard slip for just that delectable second on the beach, as had she. There was no denying that sudden flash of desire, even if he had covered it up immediately with his usual false bonhomie.

  She appraised herself in the mirror one last time. There was color in her face, and her lips were almost too red. The snug-fitting gown, the gloves, the heels, the sheen of wartime stockings, the whole package fairly shouted, Look at me. Tommy wouldn’t have let her out of the house looking like this. He’d have undone everything and hustled her off to bed.

  She smiled at that memory, but then the smile faded, much as Tommy was fading from her life. War, she thought—the original no-one’s-to-blame divorce machine. She’d done nothing wrong, he’d done nothing wrong, and then this goddamned war had split them apart like a meat cleaver, and with the same stunning finality.

  Face it, babe, she thought. Beast was right. Tommy is gone forever.

  But I’m not. I’m still here.

  Maybe it was time to live again, assuming she still remembered how.

  She sat down by the upstairs window and watched as the nurses walked over to the officers’ club in a large group, most of them wobbling uncomfortably in heels they hadn’t had on in weeks. She waited until the main group just about reached the club and then went downstairs to the front verandah and sat down again. She could see the entrance to the club from the porch. She watched the stream of white dress uniforms going through the big glass doors. The New Year’s Eve party had started officially a half hour ago, but she wanted to wait for a quorum of potential victims before she made her entrance.

  Marsh had called a few days earlier, but what she hadn’t told Sally was that he’d been calling for Sally, not her. She was glad for that, especially if it meant he’d gotten over his infatuation with her. He was such a nice guy. His homeliness was actually endearing. The two of them were perfect for each other, and they’d be even happier when Marsh finally realized that. Men were so damned slow sometimes. She’d been surprised to find out Evans was back in Pearl so soon after their last visit, but Sally had been positively beaming lately. She felt a stab of resentment: The war had snuffed out her marriage while bringing those two together.

  Then she remembered that Mick McCarty would probably be in the club tonight. She wondered what he’d do when he saw her in her man-killer regalia. He’ll laugh out loud, that’s what he’ll do, she thought. Give it to Mick: He had a very low threshold for BS. The only problem would come if he was really drunk. She could always turn to the nearest group of officers, and they’d hustle him away from her so fast his head would spin.

  And Stembridge? Really, what would he do? At every Navy social occasion they’d attended, he’d always broken off from whatever group he was with to greet her with a warm familiarity, a familiarity he’d never actually earned. Of course people thought they were an item. The fact that she’d been pretending for months she wasn’t the least bit available and he’d been pretending he wasn’t interested probably looked like some kind of mutual campaign to fool everyone else.

  He was interested, though. She knew he was. All she had to do was stand just a tad too close to hear his voice change. That was one of his problems—he never stopped talking, lecturing, instructing, informing, arguing. On the other hand, he was indeed Superman in the OR. His eyes would light u
p over that mask as he peered down at the latest challenge, followed by the usual scramble to keep him supplied with instruments. Sometimes he’d leave the OR between surgeries, and she occasionally wondered if he was getting a hit of pure oxygen or perhaps something a little more chemical. She knew that wasn’t likely; the docs who were dependent on some kind of pills usually became more and more so, to the point where they just crashed and burned. Stembridge was just Stembridge—all energy, intelligence, polite impatience, and absolutely maddening reserve when it came to reacting to the guarded wiles of Glory Lewis. She checked the flow of traffic at the club, saw that it was diminishing, and decided it was time to go break some hearts, and one in particular, unless he really surprised her.

  * * *

  Marsh spotted Sally as soon as she came through the doors with the herd of nurses. He was one of at least a dozen officers to roll in on the group like a bunch of fighter planes, peeling away from the bar in an echelon formation of flushed faces and choker white uniforms. Ordinarily he’d have been late, but the skipper knew about Sally and had ordered him to cut loose on time and hand over the day’s remaining crises to the ship’s duty officer. He’d also gotten them rooms at the BOQ, using his clout as a commanding officer, so that neither of them had to stagger back to the ship in the wee hours in front of the crew.

  Sally gave Marsh a big hug, much to the disappointment of two other guys who’d had her targeted.

  “Buy me a drink, sailor?” she said softly.

  “You betchum, Red Ryder,” Marsh said and whisked her away from the swarm.

  They snared a table for two against the wall and just looked at each other. No matter what she says, Marsh reminded himself, we do not mention or even think about mentioning GL. Gazing into those blue eyes, he found that determination getting easier by the moment.

  “I never expected you guys to be back so soon,” she said.